Category Archives: Raptor Ecology and Conservation Team

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Two young northern harrier chicks in Conklin, Alberta. Northern harrier hawks build their nests on the ground in prairies, fields, and bogs. Lionel Leston found this nest while hiking through a watery fen.

Justine Kummer and I spent a few days down south near Pincher Creek, AB, with Bayne-lab graduate student, Jesse Watson, to catch his study species, ferruginous hawks (FEHA). Hawk work is VERY different from deploying automated recording units (ARUs) in boreal Alberta, which I am quite familiar with for my own study focused on bioacoustics. I’ve heard the Raptor Ecology and Conservation Team (REACT) has spent so much time driving throughout southern Alberta and Saskatchewan searching for and monitoring FEHA nests that they could have actually traveled to the moon and back (and then some)… I now understand how this could be the case.

Feist, the great-horned owl that we use to provoke the hawks into the nets set up around her. The FEHA saw her as a threat and would dive at her, getting caught in the nets. (Photo: Natasha Annich)

For the most part, FEHA work consists of driving all over the prairies monitoring various hawk nests. Along with watching these birds from afar, FEHA researchers also peep into the nests to count and monitor the chicks, something that Justine and I got to experience as well. Jesse’s project on FEHA deals with tracking the movements of this species during the breeding season. This season he was interested in attaching transmitters on individuals nesting on transmission towers in the western edge of the study area (Fort Macleod region).

In order to get location data for the FEHA, Jesse attaches solar-powered GPS transmitters to the back of the male FEHA he catches. Males are selectively chosen, as they will explore the entirety of the home range of each breeding pair of FEHA to search for food to bring home to his female partner and chicks. Additionally, the male is responsible for defending his territory. The female will move a bit throughout this area, but most of her time is spent in the nest with the young, making her a less ideal candidate to track.

Jesse Watson getting ready to remove the hood from the male FEHA that I was holding. (Photo: Justine Kummer)

On our third day of FEHA work, Justine and I got to experience the thrill of interacting with these birds. We managed to catch both the female and male of a breeding pair that were nesting on a transmission tower! It isn’t everyday that both of the adults get caught, so everybody was quite excited. We took measurements and weights from both birds and then released the female while Jesse worked quickly to stitch together the strands of the GPS transmitter backpack that was now sitting on the back of the male. Once the transmitter was secured, I got to release the male, and he headed straight back to his home on the transmission tower. It was an incredible experience, and I am so grateful to have had this opportunity to learn about the cool work going on in my own lab!

Now I am heading back to the boreal for more ARU deployments and to search for some broad-winged hawk (BWHA) nests for Jesse to trap at next. As an experiment, all of the boreal researchers should wear step-counters to see how close we’re getting to the moon with all of our walking!

Getting ready to release the male FEHA with the solar-powered GPS transmitter on his back. (Photo: Justine Kummer)

While attaching GPS transmitters to Ferruginous hawks in the summer of 2014, Jesse Watson and Cam Nordell encountered a number of composed, charismatic male Ferruginous Hawks, like those pictured below. Typically, a male Ferruginous Hawk eye color will range from a light brown to a fairly dark brown. Interestingly, in many raptor species, a keen observer will often be able to detect a change in eye color with age.

During the attachment of the last transmitter of the summer Cam and Jesse encountered a particularly spectacular eye color in one individual. Below you can see the fantastic golden eye color of this particular male.

If you look really closely you can actually see Cam and Jesse in the reflection of his retina. It takes a brave researcher to meet the steely gaze of one of the Canadian Grasslands top predators, but it was a fitting end to the 2014 Ferruginous Hawk transmitter attachment season.

I have utilized many of my senses during my research of Ferruginous Hawks: vision to identify the hawks as they appear from tiny pinpoints in the sky or perch cryptically on dirt mounds, sound to identify incoming adults as they scream their piteous cries as we approach their nests for monitoring, touch when grasping the hawk legs with enough power to restrain, but not enough to crush fragile bones (I also often experienced touch when the hawks touched me with their talons that sunk deep into the flesh of my hands).

During my first day banding chicks, I was immediately impressed by the smell of the Ferruginous Hawks and their nest. And I cannot say that I was smitten. It was putrid, with equal parts decay, ripe feces and an underlying oiliness. “That’s the smell of rotting ground squirrel guts mixed with excrement” my advisor informed me. I mentally retched.

My mantra during that first day was breathe through my mouth and let my fascination with the species over ride my protesting senses. Over the course of my field work, the Ferruginous Hawk aroma changed, or at least my perception of it did. As I worked with the nestlings (banding them and marking their downy heads and legs with color) and then the fledglings (when the chicks are as big as adults, with a few bristles of down sticking up through contour feathers, giving the impression of gawky teenagers with bad bedhead), I noticed I started appreciating the scent of these large prairie hawks. Their scent changed to a musky odour that was clean, earthy and sharp. I started to take pleasure in the redolent

Unwittingly, I became expert at detecting this scent, and once when opening a technicians field truck, I exclaimed in surprise “There’s been a Ferruginous Hawk in here!” The field tech assured me that she wasn’t hiding baby Ferruginous Hawks, but had retrieved a chick that had been accidentally force fledged (when a nestling decides to bail from the nest before it can fly ade ptly). She had returned the chick to the nest and the gloves that she had been wearing were in the truck. I inhaled deeply.

Our sense of smell is a powerful evoker of memories and conjurer of emotions. To me, the thought of Ferruginous Hawk scent will always be linked with expansive prairies, endless driving of questionable range roads in relentless search of radio-telemetered hawks, and the elation of watching young Ferruginous Hawks, who have survived the risky period post-fledging period, finding their coordination and soaring strongly, yet effortlessly, on thermals as they prepare to begin their first migration south.

Spring snow storms, tornado warnings, hail storms, and thunder storms are all part of field work. While we can take cover in our houses and trucks, Ferruginous Hawks are left out in the storm to fend for themselves.

It can get pretty rough out there. In fact, Ferruginous Hawk nests can actually blow right out of the tree, usually killing the eggs or young. Our nest monitoring program has found that 20% of nest failures are due to nests blow-outs and climate change scientists are worried that this will happen more often when storms become more frequent and more severe.

Some of our field work takes up to far flung places in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Leader, Saskatchewan has several claims-to-fame including nine Larger Than Life sculptures that are scattered through town.

Our favourite, of course, is the 15 foot Ferruginous Hawk nest that resides on main street.

Each bird we handle, we add two small pieces of jewellery. Both are thin metal bands that wrap loosely around their lower leg. One is a plain silver-coloured leg band that has a unique serial number engraved on it. The second leg band is coloured with a unique combination of large letters and numbers that can be seen from a distance or through a spotting scope. The National Banding Office keeps track of the band numbers and colour combos.

I encountered this pair of Ferruginous Hawks during our spring reoccupancy surveys. They were hanging out on a distribution line, in a territory that was occupied two years ago. Looking through a spotting scope, it looked like the male (the smaller hawk on the left) was wearing a leg band, but he was too far to read the band through my spotting scope. Instead, I took a photo using a telephoto lens and then zoomed in to read the band. Black 7 over S!

Resighting a band on a live bird is a rare event. Imagine writing your name on a ball and throwing it back into a huge ball pit at a play park. Now go find it. You could spend a very long time looking for it and it’s possible that you never see it again.

But finding a banded bird again can provide valuable information. If you banded it as a youngster, you will have age, where it was born, and the where it lives now. Sometimes birds are found during migration, providing important information about their migratory timing and pathway.

Male Black 7 over S was banded as an adult in 2012. He was captured in order to attach a short term satellite transmitter that was designed to fall off naturally. We collected data from the transmitter for several weeks during the breeding season, until the battery quit as planned.

A different male Ferruginous Hawk, but a nice looking bird wearing one of our satellite transmitters (see the dark spot on his back). Photo: Janet Ng.

Resighting this male is interesting in several ways. 1) He has returned to his original home range with a potential mate. We’ll keep an eye on him this summer to see if he nests. 2) He is no longer wearing his backpack transmitter, which makes us feel good that he doesn’t have to carry his transmitter anymore.

Our project has banded nestlings for specific research objectives too. Each year, we wait to see if any bird can be re-sighted by our group, other biologists, and citizen scientists.

Here is a young female Ferruginous Hawk sporting her new bands.On the left leg (her right leg) is the field-readable colour band and the silver band with serial number is on the right leg. Photo: Janet Ng.

Keep checking back for posts about our satellite tracking, juvenile life after leaving the nest, and banding.

The Raptor Ecology and Conservation Team (REACT) is in the midst of the “trapping stage” of our 2014 field season. We trap adult male Ferruginous Hawks and attach solar powered GPS Satellite Transmitters which broadcast, to us via satellite, minute-by-minute hawk locations.

As of June 19th, Jesse Watson and his crew members have capturedand attached transmitters to 6 adult males in the interest of quantifying home range sizes, priority foraging and perching locations, and migratory pathways. Telemetry data will also be used to define critical habitat under the watch of Species at Risk Biologist, Dr. Troy Wellicome.

These data are enormously powerful and we are very fortunate to have a dataset with such a wealth of information from which we can derive a wide variety of complex and fascinating research questions.

Our trapping efforts have also yielded another interesting outcome. We have captured 2 Ferruginous Hawk “Dark Morphs”, a plumage color morph that deviates strongly from the typical Ferruginous Hawk morph (see above). Rather than the characteristic “ferruginous” rusty coloration and white belly, these birds exhibit dark plumages with minimal rusty reds mixed in (see below). The Dark Morph is said to make up only ~ 5 – 10 % of the population, so we consider ourselves lucky see these birds up close and personal.

Our Raptor Ecology and Conservation Team (REACT) is running North America’s largest Ferruginous Hawk nest monitoring program. In order to study Ferruginous Hawk ecology and potential cumulative effects, we check on hawk nests once a week to compare nest success across the Canadian Prairies.

We use an extendable painter’s pole with a camera mounted on the top to peer into nests. We call them our “Tree Peepers”, trademark pending. This method is effective and fast, thereby reducing disturbance to the nest. Check out the video below to see how’s it done.

We check on nests until the young fledge (i.e. naturally leave the nest) or until the nest is done. If the nest didn’t fledge any young, we record reasons for failure. Was it predated? What kind of animal was the predator? If the nest was successful, then we record the number of young fledged, when they left the nest, and other similar data.

All the data goes into our huge database (cue computer noises) and is readied for our analyses.